Note: Make sure the movie loads fully before watching. I am trying to upload it to YouTube, but the feature is still buggy as Xtra Normal is in beta.

Using the new Xtra Normal platform, the above video took just 30 minutes to produce. This forward-step in super-user-friendly machinima brings us just a little closer to a scenario that I like to call The Toon Point, the time when virtual-world-generated video equals the average quality of a Saturday morning cartoon created in 2005. (Why 2005? Because that’s roughly when I began thinking about the notion of a Toon Point.)

Ever since my days in the West Hollywood Metaverse House, as my buddy and former roommate Jerry Paffendorf likes to call it, I’ve been a fan of virtual worlds and looking forward to The Toon Point. Due to their ability to incorporate and network other communication technologies, the potential of virtual worlds as an Interactive Communication Technology is simply astounding, and is reflected in their rapid diffusion patterns.

In particular, Second Life stands out from the pack. To date, it remains the broadest and most robust 3D platform and, as its supporting software and hardware evolves, is likely to emerge as the first Facebook or Mosaic of virtual worlds.

Still, it could stand to learn a thing or two from useful and highly entertaining micro-worlds and production studios like Xtra Normal. It remains far too difficult to effectively socialize or quickly creative quality machinima inside Second Life. By integrating an easy to use interface for basic animations such as Xtra Normal, Second Life could blow open the doors of popular machinima.

That being said, Second Life is well on its way to user-friendliness and in just a few years the quality and resolution of the real-time interactions that take place there will make for some mind-bogglingly awesome TV. It’s highly probable that it will be the platform that takes us to The Toon Point.

But in the meantime I’ll be using Xtra Normal to make all of my dialogue-heavy Scenario Land mini-movies.

Indeed Stuart. Xtra Normal is a great service when it’s not crashing. I think the attention and traffic they’ve been getting is pulverizing their servers and user experience.

For now, it’s free and open to all, but they intend to soon start charging credits for size of video files. This should help with the lag, but will unfortunately limit broader use of the site.

Hopefully someone that believes in the power of their UGC model will want to fund them and insist they open up to the web. That being said, in this economy early monetization is key. And, if this things works well, I’ll gladly pay a small amount to output a regular series of these vids.